


And Though She Be But Little

by skarlatha



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: But Then Again When Is He Not, Daryl is a Softie, First Kiss, Kittens, M/M, Rick is a Horndog, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 11:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3807928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skarlatha/pseuds/skarlatha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl's been acting very strange lately, and the group decides that Rick needs to talk to him about it. What is Daryl hiding in a cell in the unused part of the prison? And how will Rick survive the extreme cuteness of it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Though She Be But Little

**Author's Note:**

> Let's not kid ourselves, people, this is fluff. FLUFF, I tell you. But I have a lot of performance anxiety about what to follow up "Shadows Where I Stand" with, and I had to post something to break the cycle of "whatever you post next has to be EPIC" because that's just silly. So I went with something light and fun.
> 
> Set sometime in Season 3. No spoilers unless you live under a rock and don't know that the group spends time in a prison in Season 3. :)

When Rick walks in the door for the group meeting that everyone has decided to have without consulting him (at least not until it was about to begin), he’s afraid for a moment that he’s walked into an intervention. Everyone is sitting around the room when he walks in, all facing the door, all staring at him, and Carol folds her hands in front of her on the metal table and says, “Rick, we need to talk.”

Rick’s eyes fly around the room, searching for an ally against… whatever it is that he’s being interventioned for. He hasn’t hallucinated dead people in weeks now, and his eyes are back to normal and not glassed-out blue husks, and he hasn’t made any controversial decisions lately except for the night when he’d decreed, slamming his fist on the table, that if he had to eat one more plain fire-roasted squirrel he was going to start using peoples’ toes for target practice and for God’s sake could they please try to make squirrel _stew_ or squirrel _burgers_ or squirrel _hash_ or squirrel SOMETHING for a change. But surely this can’t be about _that_. He sees nothing useful in anyone’s eyes, nothing that will give him a shield against the wrath of the group. Maggie, Glenn, Carl, even Daryl…

Wait.

“Where’s Daryl?” Rick asks. His eyes go wide with panic for a second before he registers that no one in the room looks shaken or terrified or heartbroken or any of the emotions that usually come with someone being dead or missing. If anything, they all look annoyed, which is odd. But still. Daryl being absent from a meeting isn’t usually a sign of good things coming Rick’s way.

“He’s what we need to talk about,” Glenn says, and everyone in the room nods in weird, robotic unison.

 _Shit_ , Rick thinks. This can mean only one thing. He hadn’t thought anyone could read him this well. Hell, even Daryl himself hasn’t, although Daryl strikes him as the sort of man who’s observant about every detail of life except the things that are actually about _him_ , so maybe he’s just oblivious because he isn’t used to having another man’s gaze directed his way.

Or isn’t used to _noticing_ it, at least. Rick has no doubt that with biceps like that, Daryl probably turned heads wherever he went even before the apocalypse hit. Probably didn’t notice the looks then, either, though. The man honestly doesn’t seem to know how damn _delicious_ he looks, just all the time, and fuck if Rick doesn’t need to stop thinking about this _right now_ before he starts showcasing a spectacular tent right in front of a group that includes his infant daughter and his teenage son.

“What about him?” Rick asks, and he’s very pleased with himself for sounding like a level-headed leader instead of someone who’s just been trying to remember the shelf life of whipped cream. After all, even if they’ve all figured this out, Rick’s going to make them say it. _Rick, you need to give up this crush on Daryl. He’s straight. He’s not interested. He’s way too hot for you and your scraggly-ass beard._

Which is true, Rick thinks. Maybe he should consider a shave. He rubs his chin absently, trying to decide if he should go for fully smooth skin or if he should leave some stubble there. Daryl had seemed to like him better with stubble, but then again the only time Daryl has really seen him _without_ it had been those first couple of days at the quarry and the CDC and they weren’t exactly best buddies yet at that time.  

“We think Daryl might be on drugs,” Carol says, her face calm.

Rick blinks. “What?”

Maggie elbows Carol hard. “Not drugs necessarily. But come on, Rick. He’s acting weird and it’s freaking us all out. _Something_ is going on.”

Rick thinks about Daryl these last couple of weeks. He _has_ seemed a little more distant, more skittish, more defensive. He’s invited Rick out on fewer hunts and runs than usual. And he’s been showing up late for meals, sometimes skipping them altogether. But then again, the hunter isn’t much of a people person, and Rick understands that introverts need time to recharge sometimes. Maybe he’s just been recharging. That must be it.

“I think he’s just being Daryl,” Rick says, nodding decisively. “He’s fine.”

“Rick,” Beth says, _incredibly_ patiently, “this morning when we were all helping clean that deer, Daryl put part of it in his pocket.”

“The liver,” Hershel supplies helpfully. “Or at least part of the liver.”

“The liver,” Beth repeats. “Daryl put a hunk of raw deer liver in his pocket.”

“Maybe he was going to keep it for a snack?” Rick suggests.

“ _Raw_ ,” Beth says, widening her already-wide eyes at him.

Rick is, admittedly, at something of a loss for how to explain that. Daryl has certainly eaten raw meat before since he’s known him, but it’s always been more of an ‘I need energy now and can’t wait to cook this’ or a ‘can’t risk a fire so I’ll have to eat this raw’ sort of thing. He can’t remember Daryl eating raw meat if he had the option of cooked meat. “I’m sure he had his reasons,” he says finally.

“That’s not all,” Maggie says, leaning forward and putting her elbows on the table. “He ain’t sleeping in here with the rest of us anymore. And he’s not up on the roof, either. Nobody knows where he goes at night these days.”

Rick has a pretty good idea of where he’d _like_ Daryl to be going at night, but that’s a non-productive line of thought again. “Maybe he’s just feeling anti-social.”

“He meowed at me,” Glenn bursts out, and everybody looks at him, although it doesn’t escape Rick’s notice that Rick himself is the only one who seems to be surprised by this revelation.

“He what?” Rick asks after a second of awkward, awkward silence.

“He was walking back in from the yard--which was really weird, too, honestly. He went out to the very very corner and sat with his back to the guard tower for like an hour and then just, like, stood up and came back inside.” Glenn looked at Rick like this was supposed to mean something to him.

It didn’t. “And then he meowed at you?” Rick prompts.

“Yeah,” Glenn says. “I mean, I heard this weird noise when he walked by and I was just kidding around and I said, ‘hey, Daryl, your pants are meowing’ and he gave me this pissed-off look and yelled ‘MEOW’ at me and then stomped off.”

“And when he’s not yelling at us like a barnyard animal,” Maggie continues, “he’s got this weird starry look in his eyes. Like he’s… like he’s _happy_.”

“Hey,” Rick says, bristling a bit. “Daryl has a right to be happy.”

“Yeah, of course,” Maggie says back. “And I’m glad he’s happy, Rick, I really am. We all are. But thing is, _why_ is he happy? At first we wondered if he’d gotten laid or something--”

“ _Maggie_ ,” Carol hisses, motioning at Carl, who just rolls his eyes.

Maggie joins Carl in the eye-rolling. “But we all pinky-swore on truth and nobody here has been boinking Daryl. Unless it’s you?”

Everyone looks at Rick expectantly, including Carl, and Rick sort of wants to die of embarrassment right there. “No,” he says, and he hopes his scraggly-ass beard hides the majority of his epic blush.

“So then _why_ is he acting so weird?” Maggie challenges. “Carol votes secret pot stash, but I don’t think his eyes are red enough for that. Daddy says maybe a concussion but it’s gone on for several days longer than that would have. Glenn thinks he saw an episode of _House_ once where there was some weird jungle virus that made people hallucinate. Carl says alien abduction.”

Rick raises an eyebrow at Carl. “Alien abduction?”

Carl rolls his eyes again. “Walker apocalypse, Dad. _Not_ that far-fetched.”

“But anyway,” Maggie says, “he’s acting really weird and you have to find out what’s up.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Rick argues. “All of that could just be you guys making a big deal out of nothing.”

“Carl saw him carrying a bag of poop,” Beth says.

Rick looks at Carl. Carl shrugs.

“A bag of _poop_ , Rick,” Glenn says.

Rick sighs heavily. “I’ll go talk to him.”

//

The talk doesn’t go well. Or, more accurately, none of the talks in the series of _attempted_ talks go well. Daryl sticks firmly to his story of _nothing’s going on, Rick, JESUS_ and storms off any time Rick tries to press him for more answers. But Rick starts to watch him, to notice more than just the way his ass looks in those jeans and the way the sunlight hits his hair just so, and he starts to notice weird things too. Tiny scratches pop up on Daryl’s arm one morning. Another day, he takes two towels with him to the showers and only comes back with one. He catches Daryl carrying what appears to be another small bag of poop out into the yard one morning.

And then they’re out on a run and Rick catches Daryl shoving several bags of cat treats into his pockets when he thinks nobody’s looking, and really, that’s just too much.

So when they get back to the prison, Rick makes a big show of going to take a nap, and then he sneaks out and goes in search of Daryl, walking as lightly and quietly as he can manage. It takes him a ridiculously long time to find the man, and he’s just about to give up when he hears Daryl’s voice--or a strange, higher-pitched, _cute_ version of Daryl’s voice, at least--coming from a cell in the back of one of the empty cell blocks that they’ve cleared but never used.

“Aww, you like that, don’t you, baby girl?” Daryl is cooing. _Cooing_. Rick does a comical, Looney Tunes-style double-take at the sound. “You like me scratching your ears like that? Yes, you do, don’t you, sweetheart?”

Rick creeps forward toward the cell, very very carefully placing his feet down after each step so that they don’t make a noise.

“You’re so _pretty_ ,” Daryl says. “Such a pretty kitty. You wanna play?”

There’s a tiny, high-pitched meow, and Rick is just fucking _stunned_. Daryl Dixon, badass hunter extraordinaire, has a _kitten_. Who he _baby talks_ to. This is even weirder than an alien abduction, he thinks to himself, and he flattens himself against the wall when he hears a sharp scuffling sound, the scrape of tiny tiny claws against the concrete floor.

A glowing red dot comes out of the cell, closely followed by a small gray tabby kitten with her tail puffed up and sticking in the air. She lunges at it, swiping her paws around crazily when it wiggles around, and then runs after it as it heads back into the cell.

Rick blinks rapidly several times and decides _nope_ , he can’t process this right now. So he turns around and tiptoes back out of the cell block, taking great pains to make sure Daryl doesn’t hear him.

//

But he must have, because the next morning, Daryl finds Rick out by the fence. “You was there,” Daryl grumbles, looking equal parts pissed-off and tragic. “I know you was.”

“Yeah,” Rick admits. He turns to look at Daryl and smiles, but the other man is staring at the ground.

“I gotta get rid of her?” Daryl asks, and his voice is gravelly, strained, almost broken.

Rick shakes his head quickly. “No. Why would you think that?”

Daryl’s silent for a few seconds, then he shrugs. “Just figured it’s against the rules.”

“Nah,” Rick says, reaching out to clap Daryl on the shoulder. “Keep her. She makes you smile.”

Daryl flicks his eyes up to Rick’s for a second, then nods.

“What’s her name?” Rick asks after a moment.

“Um,” Daryl says, reaching up and rubbing the back of his neck. “Xena. Because she’s, you know, a warrior and shit. Fuck, I can’t believe I’m tellin’ you this.”

Rick smiles _super_ big and puts his hand back on Daryl’s shoulder. “I think it’s cute.”

“Fuck you,” Daryl growls. “I ain’t _cute_.”

Rick holds his hands up in a surrender gesture. “Okay. So… where’d you find her?”

Daryl shrugs, sniffing through the movement like he’s trying to minimize the question. “She was caught in one of them big oil drums, stuck in the bottom of it and couldn’t get out. An’ there was a couple Walkers tryin’ to dig her out of it.” He shrugs again, looking away from Rick. “Couldn’t just _leave_ her there, you know? It’s a fuckin’ kitten, not a sewer rat. What kinda heartless son of a bitch would I be if I let a bunch of Walkers eat a goddamn _kitten_?”

“So you saved her,” Rick says, smiling at Daryl’s discomfort.

“Yeah, stuffed her in my pocket and carried her back here,” he grumbles. “Stuck her in a cell so she wouldn’t bother the rest of you.”

Rick nods. “Why don’t you bring her out? Let the rest of us see her?”

Daryl licks his lips unconsciously, drawing Rick’s attention to his mouth, and Rick loses the thread of the conversation for a minute while he thinks about making Daryl do that again in a different circumstance, one involving Daryl’s tongue becoming intimately familiar with various parts of Rick’s body. _Get it together, Grimes_ , he tells himself sternly, and then tries to look like he’s not thinking dirty, dirty thoughts when Daryl starts to speak.

“I might,” Daryl says, letting out a huff of a sigh. “But not yet.”

“Why not?” Rick asks. “She’s adorable.”

“She’s _mine_ ,” Daryl says, then licks his lips _again, dammit_ , and continues. “I ain’t never had anything that was just _mine_ , Rick. Let me have her to myself for a few more days before she turns into everybody else’s.”

“Fair enough,” Rick answers, trying not to think through the implications of Daryl never having anything of his own before. “I won’t say anything.”

//

But promising not to say anything doesn’t keep Rick from _thinking_ about it, just all the time. About Daryl’s voice when he talked to the kitten, about the little silver streak chasing a dot on the floor like everything is normal and the world hasn’t ended, about the idea of Daryl doing something as soft as scratching behind a cat’s ears. It’s ridiculous and domestic and Rick needs to _see_ it, to have that image in his head to keep his heart warm on cold nights. And so the next night, Rick spends a while in the showers carefully buzzing his beard down to just the right amount of stubble and then creeps down to the empty cell block again.

It’s quiet this time, and he can hear a very, very soft snoring coming from the cell at the end of the block. Rick tiptoes down there, listening carefully to the cadence of sleep-breathing and pausing any time it breaks rhythm for a second, and eventually he’s right outside the cell.

Daryl is lying on his back on the mattress in the cell, his arms crossed behind his head and Xena curled up on his chest, her little tiny paws splayed out over Daryl’s shirt and her head tucked up into the hollow of Daryl’s throat, and Rick is suddenly very concerned that it might actually be possible to have a heart attack due to extreme cuteness.

Rick slides into the cell and kicks off his shoes, then carefully lies down on his side facing Daryl. The hunter wakes up with an almost audible snap of his eyelids and Xena stirs too, stretching so hard that her little limbs shake with the force of it, and it’s so damn adorable that Daryl seems to forget to be startled by the fact that Rick is in bed with him for just a second.

He remembers after that second is over, though, and he scrambles backwards on the mattress until his back is against the cement wall, dumping Xena unceremoniously off of his chest as he moves. “What the hell, man?” he asks, watching Rick closely.

“She ain’t the only thing that’s all yours,” Rick says, and he has no idea why he’s decided to say that _now_ but he definitely means it, so he figures it’s as good a time as any. He reaches down between them and ruffles Xena’s fur, but the kitten quickly loses interest in the two men and instead hops down to the floor and starts playing with a little catnip mouse. Rick looks back at Daryl, who is still watching him like he half-expects Rick to punch him in the face.

“The hell you talkin’ about, Rick?” Daryl asks, but his eyes flick down to Rick’s mouth and that’s all the invitation Rick needs to scoot forward and claim Daryl’s lips with his own. Daryl softens under Rick’s touch, leaning in and kissing back, but it’s hesitant, fearful, like he doesn’t quite believe that he understands what Rick means by all this.

“I’m yours,” Rick whispers against his lips, then dives back in to his mouth for a few seconds before continuing. “Been yours all along. Just yours.”

Daryl grunts, the sound vibrating deep in his throat, but his kisses and the pressure of his fingers on Rick’s arms get more confident, hungrier. “Yours too,” he mumbles after a moment. “Always have been.”

Rick slides his hand down Daryl’s chest and over his stomach, still kissing him like the world was about to end the rest of the way, and Daryl puts one hand in Rick’s wild hair and then uses the other one to catch his wrist before it travels too low.

“Not in front of the kids,” Daryl murmurs against Rick’s lips, then gives a pointed look over Rick’s shoulder. Rick leans up and turns his head to see Xena sitting on the floor of the cell, her catnip mouse abandoned behind her as she gives the two men a rather impressive psychoceramic stare that just _screams_ ‘I do not appreciate you making out with my human while I’m in the room.’

Rick looks back at Daryl, who is watching Rick’s face with a tiny smile hovering around the corners of his mouth. Rick leans forward and kisses him again, a little less carnally this time, and Daryl wraps an arm around him and chuckles into Rick’s neck. Rick laughs back and Xena hops up onto Rick’s hip and starts sniffing around for a warm place to lie down, and with Daryl’s arms around him and the sound of purring rolling over them both, Rick can’t remember a single time in his life when he’s been happier than this.


End file.
